JONES PREMIERE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER.

WASHINGTON--Choreographer Bill T. Jones doesn't care that his company's striking diversity sometimes overshadows the dancing itself. "It's a necessary evil," he said recently over a Japanese breakfast of papaya and pickled vegetables. "That's the world I want to live in. Any other world is oppressive to me and not true to my nature."

Slick transitions and uniformity prevail despite the assorted cast. This is especially noticeable in Jones's newest work, Out Someplace, premiering at Washington's Kennedy Center May 14 and 15. The fusion of styles excites the sensual, subtle choreography of Out Someplace (still a work in progress at press time). Heavily influenced by contact improvisation, the movement is sometimes self-initiated, but more often motivated by another's touch. Wiggles and quivers originate from unlikely body parts, such as the back of the neck or behind the knee.

Drinking glasses make an odd appearance in the piece, as dancers hand them to one another, seemingly indiscriminately. "It's something I've thrown into the mix to ground the dance," says Jones. "A dancer strives for an open-ended, ambiguous quality, but something as tangible as a glass is a potential pathway for observers to think of what these proceedings could mean."

Out Someplace was commissioned by the Doris Duke Millennium Awards for Modern Dance and Jazz Music Collaborations, a three-year project cosponsored by the American Dance Festival and the Kennedy Center. Thanks to the $75,000 Duke grant, the company will perform to live music.

Composer Fred Hersch will play an original piano score for the piece. The music reflects his interpretations of the various meanings of Out Someplace. "Let's go out someplace," for example, translates into an amusing and playful musical phrase; alone and scared are other feelings represented; and craziness, as in "out someplace" in one's head, is also expressed in a manic portion of the score.

For Jones, the significance of Out Someplace was entirely different. "Every time I hear [Hersch] talking about [the title] I'm a little surprised," says Jones. "He tends to make it quite literal, quite tangible. For me it's something to contemplate, meditate on, and use as an oblique reference." Thus, while the music evokes distinct emotions, the choreography is elusive and "porous enough for the jazz to have an effect."

The company's Kennedy Center performance will also feature a revised version of D-Man in the Waters (1989), set to Mendelssohn's Octet for Strings. This dance is dedicated to former company member Damien Acquavella, who died of AIDS in 1990. Two male dancers will also perform Just You (formerly It Takes Two, from 1989), set to jazz music by Ray Charles and Betty Carter. Finally, the forty-eight-year-old MacArthur genius himself, Bill T. Jones, will perform a solo.